I died about 3 times before realizing that there were a bunch of spectres around me. I died about 5 times before realizing that the rockets that I had been saving for the boss/es are able to damage me as well.

I probably died about 10 times before I came up with the strategy to kill the boss on the left quickly with 35 or so rockets and taking his little "house" hostage, Chaingunning all the spectres, and using another 35 or so rockets to take out the remaining boss himself. I was left with about...I wanna say 60% health left, and...I think 20% armor, give or take.

After this, I was kinda confused about what to do next, so I made an extra save, and after a couple minutes I found a switch in the right "house," and a minute later, I figured out what the heck it did.

I checked the map, and noticed that while I found the one secret in the level, there were about 15 or so enemies left(It's a feature of ZDoom.) Considering that I was nearly dead, and I only had about 18 or so rockets left, I was kinda scared that I'd have to restart the whole level over, kill the bosses again, and end up fighting 2 more of the same demon.. Thankfully that didn't happen, as I made my way to what I assume was a portal to...

*The rest of the post will contain early game spoilers. You have been warned!*

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....

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...hell itself. Several enemies spawned, and I pretty much was dead in 2 seconds. I got a message basically saying that if you thought you were supposed to get some cool ending for beating the game, you're wrong, because you still have 2 more sets of levels to go through(technically 3 since I'm playing The Ultimate Doom.) if I want to actually complete the game.

This is my guess for what happened. I beat the 2 big demons on the moon(I thought I was on Mars too. Odd.) in hopes of stopping all the legions of hell from arriving on Earth, then I ran into where the demons came from, hell itself. I was killed by the several legions that came out of it, and now I'm about to arrive on the entrance to hell itself!

I'm gonna stop for the night, but damn did that ending feel good!

Oh, and btw, I keep meaning to ask. Do you get anything for finding every secret on all of the levels in an episode?

For UV Max, 100% kills and secrets definitely right, except for exceptional cases. To get 100% kills is impossible in E1M8, unless using the iddqd cheat code, and indeed this map have a broken ending. When health decreased to nearly 0, then this map ends, as well as the whole episode. In E2M8 and E3M8, kill the boss will automatically ends the game. Actually some other wads like 2002ado E1M8 have the similar ending.

Not quite, you can rocket-spam liberally in the final room, since you're going to end the level even if you die, so it's plausible that you can get 100% kills (dunno what the actual record for a COMPET-N uv-max demo is, though).

This made me laugh but i'm glad that new players are getting into doom. I don't think you needed to warn us about spoilers since it is quite an old game which this site is dedicated to, the story isn't the main focus and most of us here have played that game through at least 10 times; some possibly 100's.

It is neat seeing that people are still getting into Doom in 2012, despite the assholes here. I think pretty much most of us have forgotten was it was like to go through E1 for the first time, so I like seeing how newbies react to it.

Wow, it been like what, fiver/four years since I've first completed E1. I remember when I beat it I though I'd beat the game and a couple months later, I found The Shores of Hell but I didn't think it was Episode 2, I though it was Doom 2, that wall until I saw Doom 2 videos on YouTube and then shortly after realized that The Ultimate Doom had 4 Episodes.

Getting though E1 was amazing for me, I hadn't seen Doom on YouTube or anything, just randomly downloaded it on XBOX LIVE ARCADE when I was looking for a new FPS. I didn't look up any of the routs or anything on YouTube so beating the game (well, E1) felt much more rewarding than had I done the latter.

Oh god, that felt so long ago. I remember when I started E3, how complicated the game felt. So non-linear in comparison to modern FPS games, which at the time was the only thing I played.

What memories. Doom is such an important part of my life, hard to imagine how much harder life would be had I not found it. Almost 3000 hours spent on it and not a second of regret. Doom in now the only game I play (Well, I occasionally play Blood online).

Doom has brought me quite allot of fulfillment, I can't even describe it in words what this game has done for my life.

I miss my old XBOX 360, playing Deathmatch was amazing. I remember my first match with briangate1 on Fortress of Mystery, he was the person that got me into spreed running. When I first Deathmatched him, I was amazed at his skill. He was the first person that could beat me at Deathmatch (keep in mind XBOX live is full of retards) and I considered him the best Doomer ever. That was way before I heard the likes of Radek Pecka, Jim Leonard, Drew DeVore, Marijo Sedlic, Vincent Catalaá, Anders Johnsen, Henning Skogsto, Adam Williamson & Hegyi, Chris Ratcliff and so on as I could go on and on and on about all the great COMPET-N players. It was Tatsuya Ito's YouTube channel that inspired me to do COMPET-N demos, specifically this video.